BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Who was Gerald Wiley? Who was Gerald Wiley? The Magazine answers... No clues to the real identity of Wiley were laid The burning question among producers and writers on The Two Ronnies was what was the true identity of the reclusive Gerald Wiley. Having just completed another successful series of the show, the team behind the Two Ronnies was invited to a Chinese restaurant in the early 1970s. This was a meal few of them wanted to miss, given that the request came from the mystery man who had written many of the sketches. The show had operated an open-door policy for writers, so all submitted suggestions were considered. Barker and Corbett went through them and rated them as if marking schoolwork, with an A, B+, C etc. WHO, WHAT, WHY? A regular feature in the BBC News Magazine - aiming to answer some of the questions behind the headlines Ask a question The producers noted that some of the best sketches came from a man called Gerald Wiley, a writer first credited for a sketch on Frost on Sunday. He had a particular knack for clever wordplay and his work included the famous "fork handles, four candles" sketch later voted the best ever in a television poll.

In it, Corbett plays a shop assistant trying to understand what Barker's customer wants. The hunt for Gerald Wiley became a great game, says Barry Cryer, who was one of many writers for the series, and who attended the restaurant. "We had accused Frank Muir and also pointed the finger at Tom Stoppard, who had the same agent," he says. No-one believed Ronnie and he had to stand up twice Barry Cryer Stars queue to pay Barker tribute "Wiley was a recluse and wouldn't come to meetings, so people cancelled appointments just to get to the restaurant. No-one wanted to miss it." When Ronnie Barker stood up and said 'I'm sorry, it was me,' he was told to sit down again, recalls Cryer. "It was a big joke that everyone had claimed to be Gerald Wiley, so no-one believed Ronnie and he had to stand up twice. It was quite a moment when his cover was blown." He had even turned down one of his own scripts, saying "Wiley's lost it, I wouldn't do this one" to maintain his cover, says Cryer, he was so determined his work be accepted on its own merit.

'Shadow of wily' The show's producer at the time, Michael Hurll, says: "The whole point was he would have been embarrassed to put his own name to it because he felt no-one could then say if it wasn't a good script. "Even after that, I'm not sure that he stopped and I wouldn't be surprised if he continued to submit under another name." REASONS TO CHANGE NAMES Writing about a personal issue To experiment in style Other Barker pseudonyms include Jonathan Cobbald and Jack Goetz, but critic Mark Lawson thinks there was significance in him choosing Wiley. "The shadow of 'wily' in that name is typical," he says. "Raised on radio comedy, Barker wrote verbally rather than visually for television, delighting in wordplay." A famous contemporary of Barker was seeking similar cover, for quite a different reason. Alan Ayckbourn wrote for Hark at Barker under the name of Peter Caulfield because he was employed as a BBC radio drama producer at the time and was not supposed to work elsewhere. In the wider world of writing, there can also be more practical reasons.

One of the most famous examples was Mary Ann Evans, who assumed the name George Eliot because she thought she would be taken more seriously. The mask of another name also enables writers to experiment without alienating the audience, or give one name to a team effort. But few could have earned a name on a dressing room door, which is what happened to Gerald Wiley at the BBC after Ronnie Barker's revelation. Got a question about the news? Maybe Who, What, Why? can help. Send the Magazine your question using the form below. Name Town/city and country Your question The BBC may edit your comments and not all emails will be published. Your comments may be published on any BBC media worldwide. Gerald Wiley | The Two Ronnies Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia The Two Ronnies Wiki Share Gerald Wiley was a pseudonym used by Ronnie Barker . Barker began using the pseudonym Gerald Wiley when writing sketches because he wished the pieces to be accepted on merit and not just because he, as a star of the programme, had written them; he continued this tradition with the material he wrote later in his career.

Barker brought his sketches in, claiming they had come from Wiley through Barker's agent Peter Eade , and they were very well received. To maintain the deception, Barker had criticised material he himself had submitted under the pseudonym; when a Wiley-credited sketch about a ventriloquist had been poorly received by the audience Barker told Corbett "Well, Gerald Wiley let us down there", and on another occasion, when looking at a script, "I don't understand this line. What's he getting at?" One of the first sketches he wrote was called "Doctor's Waiting Room", with the main part written for Corbett. Barker encouraged Corbett to buy the rights to the sketch and, further maintaining the myth, told him to reject Wiley's 'request' for £3,000 as too expensive, before giving Corbett the sketch for free. Speculation began about Wiley's identity, with Tom Stoppard, Frank Muir, Alan Bennett and Noël Coward all rumoured. After the second series of Frost on Sunday, the cast and crew were invited to a Chinese restaurant, while Wiley said that he would reveal himself.

Barker, who had told Corbett earlier in the day, stood up and announced he was Wiley, although initially nobody believed him. [1] Ronnie Barker - Telegraph Obituaries Ronnie Barker Ronnie Barker, who died on Monday aged 76, was a comedian, actor and scriptwriter who earned both fame and public affection for his appearances in television shows such as The Two Ronnies, Open All Hours and Porridge. Ronnie Barker during filming of The Two Ronnies. Photo: PA 12:01AM BST 05 Oct 2005 Barker did not look like a television comedian - his 15 and a half stones and conservative taste in dress gave him the appearance of a man doing moderately well in chartered accountancy; but his ample build and ability to project an air of unclouded bonhomie provided the perfect counterpoint in his double act with Ronnie Corbett. The Two Ronnies, with scripts co-written by Barker himself under the pen-name of Gerald Wiley, became a national institution, especially dear to admirers of the double entendre. The programme's forte was "honest vulgarity" combined with elements of the more cerebral "new comedy" of John Cleese.

Barker's own writing for the show tended to reflect his fascination with nonsense verse and word-play. His scripts included the incoherent Minister of Communication, the man who could speak only in Limericks, and the "Spoonerism" skits - one of which (the skits had a literary bias) concluded with a reference to Charles Dickens's Tale of Two Cities. One of the best-remembered sketches from the show was set in a hardware shop, where the customer is presented with four candles, after asking for "fork handles". The impact of Porridge was far greater than the number of episodes filmed (20) might suggest, and made many wonder what Barker would have achieved had he directed all his energies into acting; Sir Alec Guinness was one of many classical actors who greatly admired Barker's genius for characterisation. The part of Norman Stanley Fletcher - Barker said that he modelled the character on his father - was probably his most successful television role. The gum-chewing "Fletch", fond of inviting his fellow convicts to "naff off", was a likeable rogue whose mixture of cunning and charm allowed him to beat the system from the inside.

Related Articles Sam Kelly 30 Jun 2014 Ronald William George Barker was born at Bedford on September 25 1929 and brought up in Oxford. From Donnington Junior School he went on to Oxford High School, where he opened his chemistry textbook to find the name TE Lawrence inscribed on the flyleaf. Although there was no acting tradition in the family - his father was a clerk for Shell Mex - Ronnie became fascinated by Laurence Olivier's performance in the film version of Henry V, and played truant in order to view the picture repeatedly, even though the cinema entrance was in full view of the headmaster's study window. Before taking the Higher School Certificate, he left school to enrol at architectural college in Oxford; but he found the long hours unpalatable, and instead joined the Westminster Bank as a junior clerk. Barker maintained his interest in drama by taking part in the local amateur dramatic group, and made regular trips to Aylesbury Rep. In 1948 he took an afternoon off work, auditioned, and accepted a job (starting that night) with the company, the Aylesbury branch of the Manchester Repertory Players.

When the Aylesbury section closed down, Barker was transferred to a Welsh branch of the same company; that, too, collapsed, and he went back to Oxford to take a job as a porter at the Wingfield Hospital. The experience of working with polio victims shook him but, as he later remarked, proved invaluable in giving him a broad and compassionate perspective in his comedy. Barker continued to apply for jobs advertised in the Stage, one of which brought a two-year spell in rep at Bramhall, after which he joined the Oxford Playhouse, where he met the young Maggie Smith - and told her: "If I were you, I'd give up." When Peter Hall arrived as director of the Playhouse company, he took Barker to London with him for Mourning Becomes Electra (1955); this opened the way for other West End productions, notably Lysistrata and Irma La Douce (both 1958), and radio shows such as The Navy Lark, in which he appeared for nine years. He married his wife, Joy Tubb, in 1957, having met her the previous year while appearing in The Letter at the Cambridge Arts Theatre, where she was assistant stage manager.

Barker first saw her from behind, while she was bending down to pick up a prop: "I immediately thought: 'That's the girl for me'." He continued to work in the theatre throughout the 1960s, and in 1964 was complimented by Eric Shorter for his contribution to All in Love (a mediocre musical based on The Rivals), in which The Daily Telegraph's critic detected "extra malapropisms". In July 1965 Barker appeared in the minor classic A Home of Your Own, a short wordless satire on the habits of the British builder, with Bernard Cribbins and Fred Emney. It was Jimmy Gilbert, a BBC producer, who recommended Barker for The Frost Report in 1966. David Frost himself suggested Ronnie Corbett, whom he had seen en scene at Danny La Rue's club in London; also appearing in the show were Marty Feldman, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and John Cleese, who played the upper-class part in sketches with Corbett and Barker satirising, with the aid of their absurdly differing physical statures, the rigidity of British social structure.

Barker later said that he found most of the Frost Report team "rather 'Varsity"; as an old Oxford High man, he presumably caught the scent of "town and gown" in the air. He recalled how he and Corbett (whom he had previously met in the latter's capacity as barman at a late-night drinking club in Soho) tended to stick together "as grammar-school boys among graduates", to the point where they came to be seen as a team, and followed David Frost to Rediffusion for At Last the 1948 Show (1967), and Frost On Sunday (1968). The Two Ronnies, which began in 1971, quickly established a successful formula which was based on deliberately naive caricatures of British life: bumbling colonels, retarded yokels and bosomy barmaids. Corbett and Barker generated sympathy in viewers to the point where they were able to carry all this off with natural accents of received standard English, which was still a handicap in mainstream comedy.

The success of the shows was the result of solid scripts; with the exception of "It's goodnight from him" at the end of the news items that closed the show, there was little reliance on catchphrases (far less, for instance, than in many other fashionable shows of the period, including the "completely different" Monty Python's Flying Circus). At the start of its 16-year run, the BBC was investing heavily in "classic" serials: a spoof such as Gerald Wiley's Hampton Wick relied on its topicality, as did that of Colditz, in which Wiley's script was an earthier version of the Empire-bashing skits in Monty Python ("This place is impregnable," one despairing PoW complains, prompting Corbett to reflect: "That's what they said about Doreen Phipps. How wrong they were.") Music was provided by regular favourites such as Big Jim Jehosophat and Fatbelly Jones, the American folk singers. One of the programme's main features was a spot for an irreverent chorus of songs, for example Swing Low Sweet Harriet, performed by the Plumstead Ladies' Male Voice Choir.

The show concluded with a round-up of spoof news items of the "scientist who crossed the theories of Sigmund Freud with those of Albert Einstein and got sex at the speed of light" variety. The comparative subtlety of Barker's verbal gags limited the show's export potential, and it never travelled as well as, for example, The Benny Hill Show, though there was some success in America - in February 1978 the Washington Post's television page advertised a broadcast by Ronald Reagan with the headline "The One Ronnie". In 1971, the same year that The Two Ronnies began, Six Dates With Barker gave notice of what the comedian could do as a television character actor. Each of the Friday night shows was the work of a different writer, and the series began with a play by Hugh Leonard, The Removals Person, in which Barker played Fred, a short-sighted removal man (he was to take a similar role in his final television series, Clarence). In John Cleese's Come in and Lie Down, Barker played a complacent psychiatrist faced by an ebullient gas-meter reader with anarchic views on the nature of reality.

The last of the acclaimed series, All the World's a Stooge, was by Gerald Wiley himself, and set in the year AD 2774, in a country where custard pies were the compulsory breakfast menu and old jokes were the only permitted form of conversation. Porridge (1974-77) provided Barker with exceptional scripts and a superb supporting cast: Richard Beckinsale as Lennie Godber; Brian Wilde as the whingeing liberal, Mr Barrowclough; Brian Glover as the prison dupe - all under the watchful eye of Fulton Mackay. Fletch's character, despite his cynicism, was endearing enough to draw compliments from those with experience of genuine incarceration. When John R Watson, the former governor of Wakefield Prison, wrote to The Daily Telegraph to complain about a Panorama report on the 1977 riots in Hull prison, he added that "the humour, repartee and understanding certainly are not exaggerated in Ronnie Barker's Porridge".

Barker was not, in fact, the scriptwriter (the series was by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais), but Watson was right to consider Porridge to be Ronnie Barker's show; and it was Fletch who received letters from convicts saying that the series "felt right". In 1978 Fletcher went home to Muswell Hill in Going Straight, only to find that his wife had left him for a cardboard box mogul, obliging him to run the menage with his daughter Ingrid (Patricia Brake) and Godber. The Porridge cycle ended in 1979 with the death of Richard Beckinsale at the age of 31; it devastated Barker, who had been close to the young actor. Barker carried his successful solo career through the 1970s and into the 1980s with shows such as Open All Hours.

Arkwright, the waddling, stammering Yorkshire shopkeeper who divided his time between satisfying his roaring avarice and attempting to control his lust for the district nurse, Gladys (Lynda Baron), failed to win over the critics on his first appearance in 1976; but he went on, supported by David Jason as the frustrated nephew Granville, to run to four series. Barker was less convincing as Evans the Flash, the eccentric photographer in The Magnificent Evans (1984), which managed only one series, nor was his public quite so taken with Clarence. Just before Clarence's first appearance, Barker had taken the decision to retire following the 1987 Two Ronnies Christmas Show. Worries about having dried up creatively (he was contributing only 20 per cent of the show's scripts, compared with up to 75 per cent in the early days), and a feeling of having achieved all his professional ambitions, were compounded by anxiety about his health; he had suffered from high blood pressure since 1976 and he was badly shaken by the deaths of Eric Morecambe, Tommy Cooper and Leonard Rossiter.

On New Year's Day 1988 Barker retired to his converted watermill in Oxfordshire, devoting his energies to ordering his collection of 70,000 Edwardian and Victorian picture postcards (some of the saucier ones were published in anthologies such as his Book of Bathing Beauties), and to running his antique shop, The Emporium, in Chipping Norton High Street. Though his modesty was charming, few could have accepted Ronnie Barker's own, frequently repeated, description of himself as a "jobbing actor". In an age in which television audiences were increasingly unable to distinguish inferior material from poor artistic performance, it was Barker's felicitous position as comedian and writer - he agonised constantly over the quality of his scripts - which sustained The Two Ronnies for so long, and which made it superior to competing acts. Sir Peter Hall, who was keen for him to play Falstaff at the National Theatre (Barker refused because he could not face the traffic between Pinner and the South Bank), described him as "the great actor we lost".

Ten years after his retirement, Barker popped up briefly as the author of Mum, a play written for his daughter Charlotte, staged at the King's Head, Islington. He returned to the television screen in 2002-03 in the part of Churchill's butler in the film The Gathering Storm, starring Albert Finney, Vanessa Redgrave and Derek Jacobi. Recently he was seen again on television in The Two Ronnies Sketchbook, in which he and Corbett looked back at some of the best sketches from their long-running show. Barker received British Academy Awards in 1975, 1977 and 1978; a Royal Television Society award for outstanding creative achievement in 1975; and lifetime achievement awards in 1990 and 1996. In 1978 he was appointed OBE. He published a number of books, including an autobiography, Dancing in the Moonlight (1993). Ronnie Barker is survived by his wife and by their two sons and a daughter.

Published September 5 2005 Ronnie Corbett: small but perfectly hilarious | Letters | Culture | The Guardian Ronnie Corbett Ronnie Corbett: small but perfectly hilarious Ronnie Corbett, right, knew long before the start of The Two Ronnies that his co-star Ronnie Barker, left, wrote comedy under the name of Gerald Wiley, says Ian Davidson, one of their script editors. Photograph: David Cairns/Getty Images Letters Sunday 3 April 2016 15.07 EDT Last modified on Sunday 3 April 2016 17.00 EDT Share on Messenger Close Mark Lawson ( And it’s goodnight from him… , 1 April) suggests that for “most of the time” during the run of The Two Ronnies, Gerald Wiley’s material was chosen without Ronnie Corbett knowing that this was a pen name of Ronnie Barker’s. Not so. Gerald Wiley’s identity was revealed to all when this new and successful but strangely uncontactable writer invited David Frost and Corbett and the madly intrigued production staff of Frost on Saturday (LWT) to a Chinese meal. Ronnie Barker stepped forward to fill the empty chair.

That was in 1968, The Two Ronnies began in 1971. Ian Davidson Script associate, Frost on Saturday; Script editor, The Two Ronnies • While not normally a wearer of rose-tinted glasses, I find myself oddly saddened by the death of Ronnie Corbett . He seems to represent a kinder, gentler Britain in which it was possible, without a shred of malevolence or serious discrimination, to take the cheerful piss out of everyone and everything – white or black, male or female, gay or straight, fat or thin. And nobody, targets included, minded, because it was infused with affection and humanity. They certainly wouldn’t have erupted in fury, outrage or any of those other febrile nouns which are the tedious vocabulary of today’s politically correct zealots, obsessed with “safe spaces” and “no-platforming”. However corny and cosy it may seem now, the humour of The Two Ronnies was a reflection of a far more mature, well-adjusted society than the infantile, toys-out-of-the-pram one in which we now seem to live. As a fat, gay Scotsman who wears nothing under his kilt, thanks for the laughs, Ronnie.

Alan Clark London • Mark Lawson mentions Ronnie Corbett’s eulogy to Ronnie Barker at the latter’s memorial service in Westminster Abbey in 2006, one of the best memorial services I have attended. The Guardian headlined its report “ Westminster Abbey becomes a comedy gig ”. The abbey provided Corbett with a box to stand on in the pulpit so that we could see as well as hear him and, with uncharacteristic humour, the opening lines of the order of service read: “All stand to sing the hymn during which the choir, led by the beadle, and the Abbey clergy, preceded by the Cross of Westminster and four candles, move to places in the choir and sacrarium.” Chris Birch It is writ large: Rowling has proved her credentials (From HeraldScotland) / Colette Douglas Home , Columnist Why did she do it? Why did the world's richest and most successful writer publish a book under another name? JK Rowling has returned to adult fiction with a detective novel – but her loyal readers would have had to turn detective to discover her authorship. She launched The Cuckoo's Calling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

Then, like most novelists, she waited to see whether it would catch a fair wind. The book was well enough received. Fellow writers gave it generous quotes for the cover. Critics were complimentary, and so were readers in their reviews on Amazon. Loading article content Yet it sold modestly well, between 500 and 1500 copies in hardback depending on which report you read. Rowling, as Galbraith, shared the fate of many decent writers who enter the market with their souls filled with hope and watch while their bank accounts fill with little more than fresh air. Ian Rankin put it well when he tweeted: "Debut novelist garnering good quotes from famed authors for the cover plus good reviews can expect to sell only a few hundred copies." What a contrast to her first attempt at adult fiction. Publicity for The Casual Vacancy long preceded its publication. Advance orders ran into tens of thousands. On publication day its distinctive yellow cover dominated store fronts. It was a publishing event, that year's biggest. Other authors could only gaze on in envy as their efforts were overshadowed by Rowling, the publishing phenomenon.

Who could have guessed that for her next venture she would choose to join them, if only for a few weeks? Did she do it because she believes in fairness? Or is it because she wants to be valued on her merit and not her name? I'm sure it's that and I can't help admiring her. Think of the risk she was taking. Had the book not found a publisher or had it been panned by critics, her secret would have come out just the same. Rowling's involvement in anything is too newsworthy to stay secret for long. You can imagine the headlines. I'm also interested that Rowling feels the need or desire to write. Her personal success was a real-life Cinderella story. Harry Potter transformed her from struggling single parent to a global personality of untold riches. Cinderella didn't go back to sweeping floors and shelling peas. Yet Rowling has never stopped writing. Maybe it should instruct the rest of us. Why crave financial success when those who have it still want or need the satisfaction of work well done? I suppose it's the hallmark of a real writer, many of whom don't feel a day has been well spent if they haven't put pen to paper.

What's important to them is to strive for improvement, to leave their chalk mark on the wall of talent. But with writing and books there is a further conundrum – and that is how do you know how high your mark is? Can you judge by sales? If so Dan Brown has hit the heights yet many avid readers would rather have their teeth pulled than open his covers. Ditto EL James and her extraordinary success with Fifty Shades of Grey. At the other end of the scale you might start with the Booker short list. The best-selling author Robert Harris dismissed it as "evil" saying: "It encourages and fosters the difference between supposed 'literary' novels and perfectly good books." He castigated the literary establishment for heaping the most praise on the writers with fewest readers. Rowling's attempt to go incognito through the publishing world like a queen traversing her kingdom disguised as a peasant has precedent. Ronnie Barker, the comedian and actor, submitted scripts under the name of Gerald Wiley. It was only when Wiley was summoned to a meeting and Barker turned up that his cover was blown. He did it because he wanted to be sure his jokes were funny and not accepted because of who he was. It's the same story with Rowling really.

Many writers have taken the same pseudonymous path, though not all for the same reason. The former poet laureate Cecil Day Lewis wrote 20 detective novels in the name of Nicholas Blake. Julian Barnes wrote about a bisexual police officer called Duffy under the nom de plume Dan Kavanagh. John Banville becomes Benjamin Black when he writes about Dublin pathologist Quirke. I heard Banville speak about the experience at the Aye Write! book festival in Glasgow. It was almost as though the different authorial name allowed him to write in a different style. Perhaps that too affects Rowling. Does a new name allow her to leave her Harry Potter persona behind? Rowling isn't the only author with a well-known name and wondering how good she really is. In a Radio 4 interview to be broadcast this week the acclaimed writer Martin Amis talks of the "burden" of having Kingsley Amis as his father. He says it damaged his career. Many struggling writers would envy him the instant recognition his father's name afforded him when he was starting out. But there are also the jibes. One critic described his meteoric rise as "rocket propelled".

In the back of Amis junior's mind there seems to be the question: would I have been so successful otherwise? Amis senior was a meritocrat. I interviewed him when he was an old man and he told me about his club. It was a haunt of aristocrats, he told me, the ones who inherited titles as well as real aristocrats; people of talent. Lottie Moggach, whose mother wrote The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and many other books, has just published her first novel at the age of 36. She, too, must now face awkward questions. She was challenged on Woman's Hour about the advantages of her name. She freely acknowledged that growing up with an author demystified writing for her meant publishing was a familiar concept. Her book was still turned down by about six publishers. And that I suppose is the saving grace of the uncertain and unregulated business of writing. It is a highly competitive world in which publishers dare not take the risk of publishing a dud – however appealing the name on the cover. I can see why Rowling wanted The Cuckoo's Calling to be judged on its merits and not on the name of its author.

The Casual Vacancy sold because it was her first foray into adult novels. The reader response was muted. Now Rowling has the satisfaction of knowing her next book was good enough to be published and to be praised on its own merit. It's revealing that still matters to her. What next? Since she has experienced the fate of those writers who, unlike her, did not hit the jackpot with their first publication, perhaps a future philanthropic venture will involve helping talented unknowns to better promote their works? Now that would be a happy ever after ending, in the best storytelling tradition. mudcat.org: Two Ronnies Barbershop Sketch song Two Ronnies Barbershop Sketch song DigiTrad: From: GUEST,Arkansas Red Date: 02 Jan 13 - 12:14 AM On YouTube is a barbershop sketch with the Two Ronnies. In it they sing a song with the line, "..I'm thinking tonight of my love far away adrift on the deep splashing foam". Does anyone know the name of this song and where I can find all the lyrics? Thanks.

Arkansas Red Sorry I don't know the song, ( which starts 5.02) but I have a shrewd suspicion that it may have been specially writen for the show, given the fortuitous occurrence of "rays are sharp" and "close shaves" in the lyrics. I could be wrong, however ....I was wrong once before ... Date: 02 Jan 13 - 10:26 AM Thanks for the link, Murray. Date: 03 Jan 13 - 08:53 AM is called Barber Black Sheep? I'll get my coat......... From: Newport Boy Date: 03 Jan 13 - 04:30 PM The original tune is 'The Old Rustic Bridge by the Mill' - as Murray says, the words are almost certainly by the scriptwriters. Date: 03 Jan 13 - 04:49 PM Great stuff! Thanks. From: Long Firm Freddie Date: 04 Jan 13 - 04:21 AM A copy of the original script of the sketch, written by Ronnie Barker under his nom de plume of Gerald Wiley is held by the V & A, details below.

I used to have a copy of All I Ever Wrote: The Complete Works by Ronnie Barker. Second hand copies are easy to find, but I have a feeling that not all the musical numbers were included, so I don't know if The Barber Shop is included.

The Two Ronnies | Christie's The Two Ronnies Estimate GBP 400 - GBP 600 (USD 690 - USD 1,000) Add to Interests The Two Ronnies A collection of shooting scripts used by British actor John Owens when working with Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett on TV comedy sketches between circa 1970 and 1984, each mimeographed typescript script signed by Owens; various subjects include the most famous of all Two Ronnies sketches known as Four Candles/Fork Handles this seven-page script with its original title Annie Finkhouse [play on "Anything Else"] By Gerald Wiley [the pseudonym Ronnie Barker wrote under], 1976, signed on the cover by John Owens; other scripts written by Barker using his pseudonym include: Elizabeth Ah Ha!, 1971; You Are What You Eat, 1978; and High Nigh, 1984; various other Two Ronnies' scripts include: Meeting People Is Wrong by Eric Idle, 1971; Party Names by David Nobbs, 1972; and Bar by Valentine Oates, 1972

; and an early script from the ITV show Frost On Sunday circa 1970 featuring Barker, Corbett and Owens; accompanied by two corresponding black and white publicity photographs, both signed by Owens, both -- 8x10in.

(2.4x25.5cm.); accompanied by a letter concerning the provenance from John Owens (12) Contact Client Service New York +1 212 636 2000 London +44 (0)20 7839 9060 Hong Kong +852 2760 1766 Shanghai +86 21 6355 1766 Lot essay The two Ronnies' Four Candles/Fork Handles /Annie Finkhouse sketch was originally broadcast on September 4, 1976 on BBC1. Judged by a TV audience of several million to be the favourite of all wo Ronnies' sketches; it was also recently voted the funniest comedy moment of the 1970s by viewers of UKTV Gold's When Were We Funniest? Set in an ironmonger's store, Barker famously used his gift for wordplay to great effect. Corbett played a shopkeeper who becomes increasingly frustrated by a customer, played by Barker, whom he continually misunderstands. John Owens appeared briefly at the end of the sketch as Corbett's assistant, Mr.

Jones, who is called on by Corbett to take over the customer's order when he can tolerate him no longer. Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett first collaborated on The Frost Report for the BBC in 1966, which moved to London Weekend Television in 1968 as Frost On Sunday. In 1971, following an impromptu performance at the BAFTAs, the BBC gave them their own series which ran until Barker's retirement in 1987. The series was contributed to by some of Britain's most successful t.v. comedy writers. Cataloguing & details Special Notice No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis. About Ronnie Corbett: master of the meandering monologue | Television & radio | The Guardian Television Ronnie Corbett: master of the meandering monologue He was the realer Ronnie – a friendly, giggly raconteur who flirted with taboos. No wonder the British public loved him A life and a career well-lived ... Ronnie Corbett.

Photograph: ITV/REX/Shutterstock Thursday 31 March 2016 13.53 EDT Last modified on Friday 1 April 2016 04.56 EDT Share on Messenger Close Ronnie Corbett’s first claim to comic fame was as part of a trio, representing the top, middle and bottom of the British class system in a sketch with Ronnie Barker and John Cleese for The Frost Report in 1968. Apart from dramatising the social caste system (the source of much British comedy), the sketch benefitted hugely from the visual contrast of the beanpole Cleese, the broad Barker and the tiny Corbett. Comedy duos have traditionally been physically contrasted, and Frost and his producers saw a fruitful pairing in Barker and Corbett. This was helped by their having the same first name, although, despite becoming The Two Ronnies in the BBC1 show that ran from 1971, the two always referred to each other privately as “Ron”.

While Corbett always sat screen-left during their newsreader spoofs (a position recently revealed to designate the senior talent in the grammar of TV), it was his partner who was more perceived by audiences and critics to have the right stuff. Ronnie Corbett, 'true great' of British TV comedy, dies aged 85 Read more Barker, between series with Corbett, starred in two of the most successful sitcoms of the era, Porridge and Open All Hours. He was also courted by the leading Shakespearean director, Sir Peter Hall, to give his Bottom or Falstaff, and wrote some of the most successful sketches for The Two Ronnies, although for much of the time Corbett was unaware of this, as Barker submitted scripts under pseudonyms like Gerald Wiley. Barker seems to have been conscious of the risk of imbalance, though. The jokey sign-off to their shows involved Corbett saying, “It’s good night from me”, followed by Barker’s conclusive, “And it’s good night from him!” This shtick had the self-deprecating effect of excluding Barker from the pay-off, and the show’s structure was designed to be inclusive of Corbett.

To balance out the tongue-twister monologues G Wiley often wrote for Barker, his co-star was given a weekly solo segment, In the Chair, in which he delivered a meandering monologue while perched on the edge of a high-back seat seemingly designed to make him look even smaller. While Corbett was skilled at delivering scripts as if ad-libbed, they were tightly written, as events supposedly remembered by the performer. The comedian’s performing voice always remained audibly Scottish, and especially so in these speeches, where he employed such High Scots pronunciations as “goaf” for golf. One effect of the chair stories was to give the audience the sense that they were seeing and hearing the real Ronnie Corbett . Whereas Barker preferred always to be seen in some sort of costume or disguise, Corbett, in the chair, presented a persona which came to be seen by the public as his character: kindly, giggly, modest. Pinterest The Two Ronnies was often cited by puritanical newspapers as the epitome of family entertainment, and is frequently called in evidence these days by moralists lamenting the decline of clean TV.

In fact, Barker and Corbett’s material was frequently smutty, at least in the manner of the saucy seaside postcards that Ronnie B collected, full of men who came from Little Hampton, mispronunciations and Spoonerisms that kept flirting with taboo words. That the duo was able to get away with so much of this stuff was largely due to Corbett’s air of friendly innocence. Corbett frequently found that his measurements dictated his professional destiny. He claimed that Stanley Kubrick had sounded him out about playing an alien in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a pair of The Two Ronnies writers, Ian Davidson and Peter Vincent, were also inspired by his height to create Sorry!, a solo sitcom for Corbett that ran from 1981-87. In that, he played Timothy Lumsden, a middle-aged man kept by his mother in the clothes and manners of a schoolboy.

The implications of the subject-matter often seemed more suited to one of Freud’s darker case studies than a peak-time comedy, but Corbett’s gentleness and warmth belied the creepiness, and the series gave him a useful independent presence around the time The Two Ronnies ended in 1987. Ronnie Corbett – a life in pictures Read more Ernie Wise had often seemed lost, professionally and psychologically, in the years by which he out-lived Morecambe & Wise. There was clearly the same risk for Corbett, especially as, while the other double act had forcibly been ended by death, The Two Ronnies was suspended only because Barker, fearing for his health after the early deaths of showbiz colleagues Leonard Rossiter and Richard Beckinsale, chose early retirement. Corbett’s reputation as an anecdotalist greatly helped his post-Barker career – he was in high demand as an after-dinner speaker, compere and chat-show guest. His reputation as a pleasant presence on sets also led to work offers from his old Frost Report co-star John Cleese, including a part in the movie Fierce Creatures, and from younger comedians such as Steve Coogan, who had grown up watching The Two Ronnies.

It is not unknown for comic couples to end up speaking only through lawyers, but the two Rons remained on warm terms until Barker’s death in 2005. Barker was already unwell when they reunited to record links for a BBC compilation show, The Two Ronnies Sketchbook, earlier that year, and those who worked on the shows spoke of the tender way Corbett helped his partner through the recordings. Barker’s memorial service, attended by 2,000 people in Westminster Abbey in 2006, featured a final joint appearance. After a recording was played of Ronnie B delivering his verbally inventive “church sermon in Cockney rhyming slang”, Ronnie C delivered a eulogy, as relaxed, anecdotal and funny from the pulpit as he had been in his chair. In the semi-retirement of his final years, he delighted in golf and grandchildren, and was a likable and liked figure on the showbiz and charity circuits.

It was a tribute to the respect and affection in which he was held that, to mark his 80th birthday in 2010, a latter-day double-act, Matt Lucas and David Walliams, produced The One Ronnie, a series of sketches in which Corbett was paired with young admirers including James Corden, Miranda Hart and Jocelyn Jee Esien. Nobody who was part of another TV duo in the era of Morecambe & Wise can be remembered as the very best of their profession. But Barker and Corbett ran their rivals very close as a pair and, individually, outstripped them. And that, as Ronnie Corbett was happy to acknowledge towards the end of his life, marked a career and a life well-lived.

Michael Parkinson and Jimmy Tarbuck speak fondly of comic who ‘should have been knighted’ as they join other mourners Published: 18 Apr 2016 Actor and comedian who became a national treasure as partner to Ronnie Barker in The Two Ronnies Published: 31 Mar 2016 TV star known for his work in The Two Ronnies, particularly his rambling monologues, died surrounded by his family Published: 31 Mar 2016 Watch a selection of some of Ronnie Corbett’s most memorable moments on screen. Published: 31 Mar 2016 BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Obituary: Ronnie Barker Obituary: Ronnie Barker Barker was one of Britain's greatest comedy talents For more than 20 years Ronnie Barker was one of the leading figures of British television comedy. He was much loved and admired for his appearances in the long-running series The Two Ronnies, with Ronnie Corbett, as prison inmate Fletcher, in the series Porridge, and as Arkwright, the bumbling, stuttering, sex-obsessed shopkeeper in Open All Hours.

Born in Bedford in 1929, Barker went to school in Oxford, became an architecture student and even toyed with the idea of becoming a bank manager, the archetypal middle-class profession he would later parody so effectively in his comic sketches. However, he joined Aylesbury Repertory Company in 1948, while still in his teens, before taking to the West End stage at the invitation of Sir Peter Hall, where he appeared in Mourning Becomes Her in 1955. Masterful wordplay He appeared in several more plays, and also broke into radio. He was in 300 editions of The Navy Lark as A B Johnson. Ronnie Barker first worked with Ronnie Corbett in The Frost Report and Frost on Sunday, programmes for which he also wrote scripts. In 1971 they teamed up for the first Two Ronnies. Barker was the inimitable Fletcher in Porridge In all, there were a dozen series. At its peak, more than 17 million viewers watched what had become a national institution, and the show was also admired abroad. The scripts relied on masterful wordplay and impeccable timing, and Barker wrote many of them.

Barker himself, however, was among many viewers who regarded his portrayal of Fletcher in Porridge as the best work he ever did. The series ended in 1977, and was followed by the less successful Going Straight, about Fletcher's return to civilian life. Open All Hours, with David Jason, which ran for several series, was the work which Ronnie Barker probably enjoyed most. He also played - less successfully - a Welsh photographer in The Magnificent Evans and, later, a short-sighted removal man in Clarence. Comic chameleon He wrote three films without dialogue - A Home of Your Own, Futtocks End and The Picnic. Ronnie Barker won a number of awards. In the late 1970s he was three times the British Academy's best light entertainment performer, and in 1975 he took the Royal Television Society's award for outstanding creative achievement. In 2004 Barker was honoured with a Bafta tribute award and celebration evening for his contribution to comedy. One of Britain's favourite comic talents Barker was a man of contradictions. He never liked sex or obscenity on television, but there was no shortage of frisky gags in The Two Ronnies.

Equally convincing in an overall, uniform or frilly frock, one of comedy's great chameleons was less happy when asked to walk on stage and play himself. He was modest about his writing skills and often submitted his scripts under pseudonyms, in order for them to be judged on their own merits. Able to deliver the great tongue-twisting speeches required of his characters, Barker pronounced himself "completely boring" without a script. And when he considered that his own scripts had begun to decline in quality, he left showbusiness in 1988 to open an antique shop near his Oxfordshire home. Resisted As well as citing a decline in health for his reason for retiring, Barker said he always felt he should quit while he was ahead, and he had no further ambitions. He resisted all calls back from retirement, until he felt compelled to write a play for his actress daughter Charlotte, in 1998. The play received poor notices, and Barker's name was only added to the bill at the behest of the director.

He finally gave in to public demand in 2002, delighting millions of viewers with his first TV drama appearance in more than a decade, as Winston Churchill's manservant, in The Gathering Storm. Three years before, he had enjoyed a Two Ronnies Reunion Night on BBC One. Barker joined Corbett to introduce the best of their sketches, and the hardware shop "Four candles - Fork handles!" set-piece was judged the most popular by a television audience of millions. Earlier this year the two actors once again reunited for The Two Ronnies Sketchbook, for a six-week run that proved popular with audiences. Viewers rediscovered the pleasures of the duo's tightly scripted routines, and proved that while Corbett's golfing jumpers had passed their sell by date, the pair's impeccable delivery and the comic chemistry between them had a longer lasting appeal.

Question: Who wrote TV scripts under the nom-de-plume 'Gerald Wiley'?
Answer: Ronnie Barker